Peasants rally to demand justice for displaced hari

Karachi
A large number of peasants took out a rally here on Saturday demanding of the Sindh government to rehabilitate the family of a hari, Ghulam Ali Leghari, so that the community may live a secured and peaceful life.
The victim family was forcefully displaced by cruel landlords belonging to the Juneja tribe in Sinjhoro, Sanghar.
Peasant rights’ organisations activists and civil society representatives also joined the protest for a ‘noble’ cause.
The gathering also urged the government for introducing realistic land reforms to save the landless ‘haris’, who were facing frequent displacements and migration in search of livelihood.
The rally was organised by the Sindh Land Reforms Movement (SLRM) with Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER), Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), Search, Sindhi Hari Porhiat Council, Sindh Community Foundation, Green Rural Development Organisation (GRDO) and other organisations.
Led by Shujauddin of PILER, Nobahar Wasan, Punhal Sario, Waheed Jamali, Mir hassan Mari and Suhail Siddiqi of PFF, Ghulam Hussain Malkani and others, the rally started from the Old Campus to the Hyderabad Press Club.
The victim ‘hari’ narrating the plight said that landlords with the backing of politically powerful people have forced his 22-member family to leave his agriculture farm and later they bulldozed their shelters. Despite being aware of the incident of violation of law, the police officials of district Sanghar seemed reluctant to take up the case, because they were under pressure of certain political people.
Farmers freed from bonded camps in different areas, including Manoo Bheel, also attended the rally. They came to express solidarity with the victims of cruel system.
Ghulam Ali Leghari joined the agriculture farm as sharecropper 32 years back near village Jaffar Khan Leghari, Taluka Sinjhoro, Sanghar district.
The working atmosphere was inspiring, so he built a shelter to live with family. He lived there with 22-member family, including eight sons, three of whom married and with children.
Punhal Sario said there were more than seven million landless rural people and peasants in Sindh, who do not have ownership of their shelters. They live at lands of landlords ordinarily and whenever land owners want they remove them and they migrate to other areas.
Ghulam Ali said there was need of ‘hari ‘courts in the rural areas so that the aggrieved farmers have some respite.
The peasant rights’ activists stressed that the legislators and parliamentarians in Sindh were largely landlords they turn deaf ears to exploitation of the peasants.